The widespread usage of electronic telecommunication signaling and data processing devices such as facsimile, modems and similar apparatus, inevitably involves more and more transmissions which contain confidential and private information. Such transmissions are aimed to the specific recipient or communicant only. A misdialed transmission might end up with an empty handed recipient, and the disclosure of sensitive information to the wrong person may lead to substantial damage. Nowadays, the transmission of a facsimile or computer generated transmission carrying sensitive information, is burdened with the uncertainty that the dial number was erroneously dialed to a wrong recipient.
There have been attempts--in the prior art--to address the issue of preventing facsimiles from arriving at wrong recipients. One such attempt is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,357,245 issued to Hagiwara, entitled "Communicant Verifier". Hagiwara makes use of a memory part that memorizes a list of approved communicants, and a comparison part, that--after a number was dialed, searches the memory to find an identical number. If such a number is found, the transmission is continued, otherwise it is terminated. However, the Hagiwara patent suffers from an apparent drawback. It enables easy access and protection only to facsimile transmissions that are sent to a recipient who is already listed properly in the memory. If the user desires to send a facsimile to an occasional unlisted recipient, as is common when using facsimiles and modems, the user should store the number as a listed number in the memory part, and then dial the number again to enable the transmission. After the transmission is completed, the user may either leave such occasional number at the expense of the memory storage--adding unnecessary data there into, or bother to delete the number from the memory part. In addition, when the number is entered wrongly into the listed memory, this will disable future attempts to send a transmission that was dialed properly. Obviously, such an operation is cumbersome and it is likely that most users would resort to bypassing the protection altogether--and so rendering the protection useless.
Another attempt is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,099 issued to Von Meister, entitled "Method and System for Storage and/or Transmission of Confidential Facsimile Documents". The Von Meister Patent is based on sending facsimiles to a central store and forward facility instead of direct transmission to the recipient. The central store and forward facility possesses some kind of safety means, allowing the recipient to retrieve the facsimile only by dialing to the central store and forward facility and adding a security code which is attached to the facsimile, and was agreed upon in the first place between the recipient and the sender. Such a method, although seemingly appears to be very secure, also suffers from drawbacks that limit its use or make it gravely inconvenient. Firstly, only a recipient that is subscribed to this security system, may receive secured facsimiles. Secondly, erroneous dials are made by the sender, and therefore such system is more likely to protect the sender rather than the recipient from misdials. Thirdly, such a method does not allow facsimile transmissions to be conducted in a simple way as people are used to. It requires numerous additional operations, such as, the coordination of a security code to be made known to both the sender and the recipient, the attaching of the security code to the facsimile transmission, the contacting of the recipient in order to inform him of the transmission, and finally the recipient is required to retrieve the facsimile from the system by himself. Fourthly, if the sender dials a wrong number or does not have the right code, the facsimile may reside forever in some system beyond the control of the sender or recipient, the system is unable to get rid of the facsimile, and the true recipient is unable to locate his lost transmission.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a method and system for effectively securing the facsimile transmissions through dialing systems against wrong dials, without the need for adding excessive operations to the single dialing process, and without imposing coordination operations between the recipient, the sender or some intermediate element.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a method and a system for verifying a correct dial without the disadvantages entailed with the prior art.
Further objectives of this invention are to provide a method and a system for verifying a correct dial whereby the system is efficient at the time of the usual connection dial, reliable against most common misdials, easy to implement or apply by unskilled personnel, adapted to couple to or use with conventional facsimile machines, modems, telephones, telecommunication and switching apparatus, successfully reliable through misdials or when insecure transmission is sought without causing any damage or obstruction to the orderly operation of the system, requires minimal manufacturing operations and little maintenance if any, universally applicable regionally, nationwide or worldwide, and that may be standardized to be virtually applied to any dial.
In particular, it is an object of this invention to provide either a unitary assembly or software or prescription that can be sold in kit form and assembled or applied, respectively, as an add-on module or step by an unskilled householder or personnel using normal structure and assembly of the telephone, facsimile, modem, computer or any other dial communication device.
Yet, another object of this invention is to provide users with simple access to the facsimile machines or their equivalent, without requiring manipulation through instruction menus each time a facsimile transmission needs to be protected.
Still, a further object of this invention is to provide an adequate response to the need for prevention of most common errors, namely, incidental typing errors or erroneous retrieval of the right dial keys. Such typing errors may include striking a wrong dial key or interchanging two dial keys. Erroneous retrievals often occur when a dial series of keys, such as of a fax accession number, is given orally over the telephone, and the recipient misunderstands part of it.
These and other objects will become more apparent when viewed in light of the accompanying drawings and following detailed description.